Cyberpunk 2077 Graphics Comparison Video Between 2018 and 2020 Builds Shows Many Differences

[Raevenlord]

Cyberpunk 2077 is the year's most awaited game release, and has been met with not one, but two delays already. Originally expected to ship in April of this year, it has since been postponed to September, and now to November 19th on account of extra optimization and bug quashing from developer CD Projekt Red. However, the recent gameplay videos released for the game by the developer showcase the amount of work that has gone into the engine since 2018, when we were first treated to a gameplay video.

The video after the break comes courtesy of YouTube user 'Cycu1', who set up the 2018 and 2020 trailers side by side. In it, you can see extreme improvements to overall level and character detail (some of this can certainly be attributed to a lower-quality 2018 video compression). However, the video also showcases some lighting differences (I guess it's subjective whether this has worked out for better or worse, but the new videos supposedly make use of ray tracing). Another point that I'd like to call your attention to is that there seem to be some environment differences between the two versions - it seems that some environments were simplified compared to their 2018 version, such as the "Going Pro" mission - the chair and panels were removed from the environment and replaced by what looks like a garage door. Whether this was done as a way to improve performance is on CD Projekt Red's purview.

View at TechPowerUp Main Site

 

[Deleted member 177333]

Thanks for sharing!

 

[TheLostSwede]

Don't forget about the censorship for the US market... No nipples allowed...

 

[sam_86314]

Don't forget about the censorship for the US market... No nipples allowed...

Don't worry. If that ends up being the case, the modding community will have us covered.

or should I say uncovered?

 

[bubbleawsome]

I imagine that's because it's in the trailer. CDPR hasn't been one to care about that in their games much at all.

 

[raptori]

The majority of differences are improvements.

 

[Upgrayedd]

Didn't TW3 have quite a bit of nipple?

 

[Slizzo]

Didn't TW3 have quite a bit of nipple?

Sure did.

 

[The Quim Reaper]

Well, at least they've kept the differences between the two to a minimum for CP2077, compared to the big graphical downgrade that The Witcher 3 went through between demo and final release, so they seem to have learnt their lesson from the backlash they received over that.

 

[Chrispy_]

Remember folks, just because raytracing is expensive does not mean it's better. There's a huge amount of hype over raytracing but we're simply not at the point where it's always a positive tradeoff. IMO it can look better in carefully setup scenes. Applied blanket-wide to a whole world, the approximation of raytracing is often worse than the baked lighting methods we've been seeing for 15 years.

In many (most?) of the scenes, the baked+faked lighting looks significantly better in the non-raytraced 2018 version. Sure, the texture details have been improved in those scenes after two extra years of work on the art assets but the lighting on the raytraced 2020 version is terrible. This one scene below might be the worst example of many where the raytracing falls flat, the ambient and diffuse lighting just looks so wrong and fake, and the woman has turned into an orange oompah-loompah in what should be a scene with massive shadow contrast.

Every. Single. Aspect. of lighting looks categorically better in the non-raytraced version, and it'll run way faster too.

 

[bubbleawsome]

In that once scene specifically it looks like one is bright, clear daylight while the other is around dusk, with artificial lights being what's lighting her up.

 

[QUANTUMPHYSICS]

Still looks like a Borderlands-GTA:V clone to me.

 

[Fizban]

Remember folks, just because raytracing is expensive does not mean it's better. There's a huge amount of hype over raytracing but we're simply not at the point where it's always a positive tradeoff. IMO it can look better in carefully setup scenes. Applied blanket-wide to a whole world, the approximation of raytracing is often worse than the baked lighting methods we've been seeing for 15 years.

In many (most?) of the scenes, the baked+faked lighting looks significantly better in the non-raytraced 2018 version. Sure, the texture details have been improved in those scenes after two extra years of work on the art assets but the lighting on the raytraced 2020 version is terrible. This one scene below might be the worst example of many where the raytracing falls flat, the ambient and diffuse lighting just looks so wrong and fake, and the woman has turned into an orange oompah-loompah in what should be a scene with massive shadow contrast.

View attachment 160387

Every. Single. Aspect. of lighting looks categorically better in the non-raytraced version, and it'll run way faster too.

I disagree, I prefer the lighting on the right, it looks much more natural.

 

[dinmaster]

That hair tho

 

[TheLostSwede]

That hair tho

They modelled it after Conan O’Brien...

 

[Readlight]

Put song in game cold as ice

 

[bug]

Remember folks, just because raytracing is expensive does not mean it's better. There's a huge amount of hype over raytracing but we're simply not at the point where it's always a positive tradeoff. IMO it can look better in carefully setup scenes. Applied blanket-wide to a whole world, the approximation of raytracing is often worse than the baked lighting methods we've been seeing for 15 years.

In many (most?) of the scenes, the baked+faked lighting looks significantly better in the non-raytraced 2018 version. Sure, the texture details have been improved in those scenes after two extra years of work on the art assets but the lighting on the raytraced 2020 version is terrible. This one scene below might be the worst example of many where the raytracing falls flat, the ambient and diffuse lighting just looks so wrong and fake, and the woman has turned into an orange oompah-loompah in what should be a scene with massive shadow contrast.

View attachment 160387

Every. Single. Aspect. of lighting looks categorically better in the non-raytraced version, and it'll run way faster too.

The easiest way to do ray tracing injustice is to capture it in specific screenshots. Looking at the video in motion, ray tracing looks way better.
This screenshot, in particular, tells us nothing, because between 2018 and 2020 the global lighting has obviously changed (look at the overpass). There are actually two lighting inaccuracies in the 2018 version, but I won't hold them against rasterization, but rather to the unfinished state of the game back then.

 

[cucker tarlson]

Remember folks, just because raytracing is expensive does not mean it's better. There's a huge amount of hype over raytracing but we're simply not at the point where it's always a positive tradeoff. IMO it can look better in carefully setup scenes. Applied blanket-wide to a whole world, the approximation of raytracing is often worse than the baked lighting methods we've been seeing for 15 years.

In many (most?) of the scenes, the baked+faked lighting looks significantly better in the non-raytraced 2018 version. Sure, the texture details have been improved in those scenes after two extra years of work on the art assets but the lighting on the raytraced 2020 version is terrible. This one scene below might be the worst example of many where the raytracing falls flat, the ambient and diffuse lighting just looks so wrong and fake, and the woman has turned into an orange oompah-loompah in what should be a scene with massive shadow contrast.

View attachment 160387

Every. Single. Aspect. of lighting looks categorically better in the non-raytraced version, and it'll run way faster too.

weird comment really

1.this scene is not from the RT demo,we don't know what the settings are
2.rtx version includes rt diffuse lighting like in control and metro two colonels,not rat traced GI like original metro
3.no wonder 2018 scene looks better,there's sun in it.2020 has no sun at all.

 

[Deleted member 197986]

Remember folks, just because raytracing is expensive does not mean it's better. There's a huge amount of hype over raytracing but we're simply not at the point where it's always a positive tradeoff. IMO it can look better in carefully setup scenes. Applied blanket-wide to a whole world, the approximation of raytracing is often worse than the baked lighting methods we've been seeing for 15 years.

In many (most?) of the scenes, the baked+faked lighting looks significantly better in the non-raytraced 2018 version. Sure, the texture details have been improved in those scenes after two extra years of work on the art assets but the lighting on the raytraced 2020 version is terrible. This one scene below might be the worst example of many where the raytracing falls flat, the ambient and diffuse lighting just looks so wrong and fake, and the woman has turned into an orange oompah-loompah in what should be a scene with massive shadow contrast.

Every. Single. Aspect. of lighting looks categorically better in the non-raytraced version, and it'll run way faster too.

The woman aged and they forgot to feed her with nice food.

Maybe they also sticked with game developing techniques of 2018, so old, a game should nowadays be developed in the same one year, that's my opinion, no matter what.

 

[Upgrayedd]

Maybe they also sticked with game developing techniques of 2018, so old, a game should nowadays be developed in the same one year, that's my opinion, no matter what.

Damn one year? CoD conditioning? One year is highly unrealistic especially for a game with any amount of ambition like this. It would probably leave such a bad taste in consumers mouths that no one would ever buy any of your products again.

 

[Colonel Sanders]

It is great to see that the 2020 version of Cyberpunk is replacing women with transsexuals.

 

[Vayra86]

weird comment really

1.this scene is not from the RT demo,we don't know what the settings are
2.rtx version includes rt diffuse lighting like in control and metro two colonels,not rat traced GI like original metro
3.no wonder 2018 scene looks better,there's sun in it.2020 has no sun at all.

It is weird though. The 2020 version is not an improvement in any way, really. The hair! Wtf is that, she just got up out of bed? Skin tone is a huge misfire too. Even despite the lighting oddities and differences, it just looks like a washed out, underexposed mess... The left shot has cinematic quality. The right leaves you wondering all sorts of things. Is she mutating, for example.

There are some writings on the wall. Assets were removed from scenes too. Is this in service of RT performance? I sure as hell hope not... I'm really not up for less complex scenes just for lighting changes, seems like an odd trade off; I don't see the upside for those who will use RT there either.

But we're going off horribly incomplete info that is for sure.

 

[cucker tarlson]

cinematic trailers are more cinematic than game ?
that's news